Introduction to Postmodern Philosophy

The heart of postmodernism is the view that reality cannot be known nor described objectively. This contrasts to the modernist view that says reality can be understood objectively. In this brief article we will suggest how postmodernism arose and describe a Christian response.

Medievalism (800-1500’s AD)To comprehend the rise of the postmodern worldview, we need to go all the way back to medieval Europe, to see how modernism itself first developed.

Medieval European society was collective,theisticandstatic. It was collective, because a strong sense of individualism did not yet exist. People lived for God and King in a duty-filled world. It was theistic because what happened in life took a back-stage to the divine drama, as mediated by the Roman Catholic Church. And it was also static because people largely accepted their station in society. A limited amount of inventive thinking and a passive acceptance of fate hampered the solving of many problems.

The End of Medievalism – the Renaissance (1500’s AD)The coming of the Renaissance in the 1500’s modified the medieval mindset. During the Renaissance, classical learning was re-discovered and a new era of fresh learning began. Also, individuals such as Francis Bacon (1561-1626) developed the scientific method, causing the world to be understood in a new way.

As the role of reason reasserted itself and the new scientific methodology began to be employed – first to understand the world, then to improve it – an optimistic belief in progress arose, as well as an increasing confidence in the capacity of humans to solve problems. Humanism began to replace theism in European society.

Philosophy itself became focused on the individual. During the Renaissance, René Descartes (1596-1650) found what he felt was an objective and certain foundation for knowledge in the individual. Accepting no tradition from the past, and questioning the truth of everything, Descartes used a process of doubt to discover if there was something he could not doubt.

Descartes concluded there was one thing he could not doubt – his own existence. Accordingly, he founded his new philosophy on his famous axiom, Cogito, ergo sum – "I think, therefore, I am."

In defining reality in terms of the thinking self, Descartes felt he had discovered a certain and objective foundation for truth. He thought of the individual as a subject observing the world as an object. This understanding nicely matched the new scientific method of inquiry, in which observers view and objectively seek to measure what is happening in the world. This new 'Cartesian' philosophy became so influential that it set the philosophical agenda for the entire modern period.

So, as the Western world grew beyond medievalism, it’s worldview shifted from being collective, theistic and static to being increasingly individualistic, secular and progressive.

The Enlightenment (1650-1800 AD)Modernism began with the Renaissance and achieved its early flowering under the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment - arising out of the Renaissance worldview and based on a belief in human capability, the scientific method, and the certitude of knowledge - was a tremendously confident and optimistic movement that sought to create an improved world based on reason. As a movement, it ran in western circles from about 1650 to approximately 1800.

Isaac Newton (1643-1727) was the greatest figure of the Enlightenment. The discovery of his laws of motion caused people to regard the cosmos as an entity which functions in an orderly way according to natural laws.

The modern worldview developed out of a combination of a belief in an orderly, Newtonian universe and the certitude of Cartesian philosophy. Modernism perceives the world as possessing an objective reality which can be discovered with certainty through observation and reason.

Immanuel Kant’s Influence on ModernismFor all its promise, the Enlightenment came to an abrupt end when skeptical philosophers such as David Hume (1711-1776) raised serious questions about the ability of the self to objectively comprehend reality.

Hume’s skepticism threatened to collapse the fledgling modernist worldview. It was rescued, for the time being, by Immanuel Kant.

In his response to Hume, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) created a new basis for knowledge. Basically, Kant argues in his seminal work, Critique of Pure Reason, that knowledge depends on the structure of the mind. We are able to comprehend reality because categories exist within our minds that actively generate perception. These categories, Kant assumed, are universally the same in all people. Thus, we all perceive the world in the same way.

Kant wanted to provide a basis for a continued belief in objective truth. But his philosophy raised the obvious question, “How do we know if the perception generated by the mind truly corresponds to reality?”

Kant does not provide us with an adequate answer to this question. So, although his philosophy allowed the modernist era to continue by preserving a belief in objective truth, it also raised the crucial question that ultimately led to the rise of postmodernism.

Friedrich NietzscheFriedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is the person most responsible for transitioning philosophical thinking into postmodernism. Completely rejecting Kant’s theory of transcendental categories, which are supposedly shared by all people, Nietzsche concludes that truth is nothing more than an illusion.

He taught that we each construct our own world according to our own perception. There is no objective truth, only our own perception of what is true. Our minds share no common categories. Instead, truth exists only within the specific linguistic contexts which we construct and perhaps share with others. Truth is a metaphor, an illusion of our perception, which appears real only because we have become so familiar with it.

Whereas Descartes made the thinking self to be an objective observer of the universe, and Kant reinforced that idea, Nietzsche effectively dethrones the self from the center of objective reality. He undermined modernism and raised some of the most important seminal issues which others later developed into postmodernism.

Postmodern PhilosophersFollowing Nietzsche, philosophers grappled with two major problems which gave rise to postmodernism.

The first problem is that of hermeneutics - textual interpretation. It asks: “How do I know the true interpretation of a text?” Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) concluded that an interpreter cannot objectively understand the exact mind and intent of the original author of a text. Rather, a meaning for us emerges from a text only as we engage in a dialogue with it.

The second problem is that of language. It asks: “Can language objectively describe truth?” Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) concluded that language cannot objectively describe truth. This is because, he said, all language is socially conditioned. We understand the world solely in terms of our language games – that is, our linguistic, social constructs. According to Wittgenstein, truth, as we perceive it, is itself socially constructed.

In addition to these two philosophical questions, and the answers given to them, developments in the field of physics also reinforced a postmodern worldview.

During the long reign of Newtonian cosmology, it was easy to believe in rationality and absolutes. But in the twentieth century, cosmology abandoned Newton for relativity theory and quantum theory, altering the way the world is now perceived. Even as early as 1925 Bertrand Russell expressed the view that once people became used to the idea of relativity, it would forever change their way of thinking. They would abandon a belief in absolutes and begin to regard all concepts as relative.

Russell also noted that it takes time for the implications of a new cosmology to influence philosophy and society in general. After Einstein, major philosophical figures such as Michel Foucault (1926-1984), Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) and Richard Rorty (1931-2007) built on these developments to define the essential boundaries and issues of postmodernism. And then, more recently, postmodernism is also re-developing into tribalism, which is basically truth defined by communities.

The Value of Modernism and PostmodernismModernism and postmodernism have each made unique contributions to society.

By respecting the role of reason, modernism encouraged people to solve problems which had been allowed to persist during the medieval era. Furthermore, by respecting the individual, modernism also encouraged the formation of protective human rights.

But things went too far. Because modernism defines humanity in terms of the thinking self, it fails to understand the non-rational elements of human nature, including the spiritual. It also utterly fails to comprehend the limits of reason and objectivism. In effect, modernism dehumanizes us by convincing us that we are only a small cog in a great, mechanistic universe. By exalting individualism and analysis, it also hinders the development of a relational, holistic approach to life and human relationships.

Postmodernism seeks to correct the imbalances of modernism by reminding us that we do not possess an unlimited potential to understand and change the world for our own purposes. Rather, we exist in the world and in relation to it.

The Over-reaction of PostmodernismPostmodernism is a reaction to modernism. It corrects problems from the past, but also over-reacts to those problems, leading to an exaggeration. So, the chief strengths of postmodernism are in what it corrects, and it’s chief weaknesses are in what it over-corrects.

Let's look at an example. Under modernism, the prevailing theory of truth was known as the correspondence theory of truth. That is, something was felt to be true in so much as it corresponds to objective reality found in the world. The correspondence theory of truth caused people to believe that scientific truth equals absolute truth.

Postmodernism corrects this by denying the equivalency between scientific truth and absolute truth. All scientific conclusions are now understood to be tentative simply because no one has ever made the infinite number of observations required to learn if there are any exceptions.

So, postmodernism corrects modernism by helping us to understand the limits of our reasoning ability and knowledge. But postmodernism then presses things too far.

It adheres to a coherence theory of truth. That is, something is true for us only in so much as it coheres with our other perceptions about the world. But this new theory of truth makes science to be just a collection of independent research traditions, each having its own perspectives and language games. Taken to the extreme, this can lead to the absurd.

A classroom dominated by a radical postmodernism might, for instance, abandon a curriculum in favor of just letting everyone 'discover their own truth.' Inevitably, radical postmodernism leads to a social breakdown because it undermines all language, information and achievement.

Postmodernism was correct in critiquing modernism and concluding that the correspondence theory of truth is limited. We now know that the scientific method is not able to discover absolute truth.

But postmodernists who insist on the coherence theory of truth are clearly over-reacting. The scientific method is still able to come up with a reasonable understanding of how the world works. And, despite the existence of research traditions, valid scientific experiments are reproducible, descriptive and predictive – making them understood objectively by all scientists. We hardly want to live in a world in which all language, information and achievement is undermined.

Critical RealismThis is precisely the conclusion of the philosophical school known as critical realism. Founded by Karl Popper (1902-1994) and Roy Bhaskar (1944- ), critical realism builds upon the best features of modernism without falling into the excesses of postmodernism.

Basically, critical realism says that we live our lives as if there is objective reality, but we acknowledge that can never understand reality perfectly. Nevertheless, we might understand it to a reasonable degree.

Walter Truett Anderson created an illustration about three umpires (referees) that aptly describes the difference between modernism, postmodernism and critical realism. The modernism umpire says, “I call ‘em as they are.” The postmodern umpire says, “They ain’t nothing till I call ‘em.” The critical realist umpire says, “I call ‘em as I see ‘em.”

The Weakness of Critical RealismThe weakness of critical realism is that it is a pragmatic theory of knowledge that takes the best from two other theories (the modernist and the postmodernist) to create a working synthesis. As a theory of knowledge, however, it does not describe how we know what we know.

A physical answer to that question may be coming from the field of neurobiology. Once, the only people who developed theories of knowledge were philosophers; now, the neurobiologist is also becoming involved. Neurobiology is seeking to explain how we know what we know by developing a physical theory of knowledge based on the workings of the human mind.

This research will have direct philosophical implications. Results indicate that there is a structuralism to both the human mind and to DNA. As Kant previously indicated, we all possess common structures within our minds that enable us to perceive reality. But it is unlikely that neurobiology will return us to a Kantian philosophy. It is more likely that on-going results will weaken postmodern skepticism and result in a strengthened case for critical realism.

A Christian Theory of KnowledgeCritical realism appeals to the Christian thinker by avoiding the extremes of both modernism and postmodernism. It confesses that there is an objective reality around us that we can know, even while our knowledge of that objective reality will always remain limited.

Should Christians, then, adopt critical realism for their philosophy of knowledge?

If we do, we need to make one crucial change. Secular critical realism does not ground reality in the person of God. For any Christian theory of knowledge, this is essential.

For the Christian, since God is the ground of all being, the pursuit of truth is much more than an exercise in reason. It begins with an encounter with the living God. This is why St. Augustine concluded, in his theory of knowledge, that our intellect, will and understanding are all darkened without a knowledge of God.

The early modernists believed in God. They concluded that since God existed, the universe must be rational and can be studied rationally. But later modernists separated rationality from the person of God. They considered something to be true only if it could be proven by reason. Since revelation cannot be proven by reason, many later modernists concluded that God was either unknowable, non-existent, or equivalent to the laws of nature.

A Christian theory of knowledge uses reason but also admits the possibility of revelation. It understands revelation as being just another form of truth. Because reality is grounded in the person of God, the Christian is able to confess that we live in a world in which we can understand truth rationally and in which we can also know God personally.

Yet, a Christian theory of knowledge also recognizes the limits to our knowledge and reasoning ability. Because we know God, we can pursue truth. But since we do not know God fully, we will never fully understand the world. Absolute truth resides only in God. This does not prevent us, however, from seeking to understand the world in a rational way.

Christian critical realism is important for preaching by giving us confidence in our study of the biblical text. Postmodernism tells us that we cannot study the Bible objectively and that our preaching will never be more than our own subjective interpretation of the text. But Christian critical realism says we can have a reasonable understanding of the text, even though we will never perfectly know what was in the minds of the original authors. We do not have to totally abandon the grammatical-historical method of study.

For Further Reading For those who want a further introduction to postmodernism, see Stanley Grenz’s book, A Primer on Postmodernism.

The section in this website titled, “Postmoderns and the Bible,” explains a critical realism approach to studying the Bible today.